How to Do a Russian Twist
A Russian twist is a seated core exercise. Sit with bent knees, lean back to 45 degrees with your chest up, hold a weight at your chest and turn your ribs from side to side. It trains the obliques, while your abs and hip flexors hold the lean. Most lifters do 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps per side.
How to do a Russian twist
- Sit on the floor with your knees bent and your heels down, feet hip width apart. Hold a medicine ball, plate or dumbbell at your chest with both hands.
- Sit tall, then lean back until your torso is at about 45 degrees to the floor. Keep your chest up so your lower back does not slump.
- Brace your abs. Your knees point forward and stay still for the whole set.
- Breathe out and turn your ribs and shoulders to one side until the weight is beside your hip. Your arms stay in front of your chest and move with it.
- Pause for a second, turn back through the middle over 1 to 2 seconds and go to the other side. One turn each way is one rep per side.
How far you lean sets the load
Sitting upright, gravity pulls the weight straight down along your spine, so it does not twist you at all. Lean back and part of its weight starts to twist you, and the further you lean, the bigger that part. The twist is zero with the weight in the middle and largest at the end of each turn, where it pulls you further round and your obliques have to stop it and bring it back. The curves are modelled for a weight held at a fixed distance in front of your chest, turning 60 degrees each way, and show the pull of gravity only, scaled to the hardest point on the chart.
Lean back to about 45 degrees and pause at the end of each turn, where the load peaks. To make it harder, lean further back or hold the weight further from your chest before you add weight: twice as far out is twice the twist. In twists held standing, oblique activity only rose clearly past 30 degrees of turn (Swie 2004), so turn far enough for the weight to reach your hip.
How much weight should you use for Russian twists?
On Gravitus, the median man lifts 25 lb (11 kg) for 10 reps on the Russian twist, and the median woman 22.5 lb (10 kg).
- Most lift
- 22.5 to 35 lb
- Top 10% lift
- 45 lb or more
- Starting out
- under 22.5 lb
- Most lift
- 17.5 to 25 lb
- Top 10% lift
- 32.5 lb or more
- Starting out
- under 17.5 lb
- Most lift
- 10 to 16 kg
- Top 10% lift
- 20 kg or more
- Starting out
- under 10 kg
- Most lift
- 8 to 11 kg
- Top 10% lift
- 15 kg or more
- Starting out
- under 8 kg
Muscles worked
Are Russian twists bad for your back?
Not for most people, if you turn from your ribs and keep your chest up. The warning is real, but it comes from lab work on one specific pattern: a rounded lower back that bends and twists under load, rep after rep. We could not find a study that measured spine loads in the Russian twist itself.
- Where the warning comes from. Pig spine segments bent forward and back under load herniated more often with a small twist added: 71% against 29% after 3,000 cycles (Drake 2005). Twisting alone did not herniate a disc, but twisting plus repeated bending split the layers of the disc wall in 67.5% of specimens (Marshall and McGill 2010). A set of Russian twists is a few dozen turns, not thousands.
- Your lower back barely turns. In scans of a 45 degree trunk twist, each joint of the lower back turned only 1.2 to 1.7 degrees (Fujii 2007). The mid-back turned 25 degrees each way at full rotation (Fujimori 2012). Most of a Russian twist comes from your ribs and hips.
- Bending is not the danger on its own. In people, how far the lower back bent while lifting did not predict back pain, on low-quality evidence (Saraceni 2020).
So keep the parts that matter. Lean back with your chest up instead of slumping, turn your ribs instead of swinging the weight, pause at the end of each turn instead of bouncing, and keep the load moderate. If twisting or bending forward already hurts your back, train your obliques with the Pallof press, which resists the twist instead of making it.
Russian twist claims the research does not back
Three claims that many Russian twist guides repeat:
- Your lower back only turns 3 degrees, and the twist forces it past that. Each joint of the lower back turns 1 to 2 degrees in a normal twist (Fujii 2007), and the rest comes from your mid-back (Fujimori 2012). No one has measured the lower back during a Russian twist.
- Lifting your feet works your obliques harder. Your feet do not change how much the weight twists you. That comes from how far you lean and how far the weight sits from your chest, as the chart above shows. Feet up adds balance and hip flexor work, and only adds twist if it makes you lean further back.
- Russian twists burn love handles. Six weeks of ab exercise, 5 days a week, did not reduce belly fat or waist size (Vispute 2011). Love handles shrink when your overall body fat does.
Russian twist vs Pallof press vs bicycle crunch
| Attribute | Russian twist | Pallof press | Bicycle crunch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core job | Turns your trunk | Stops your trunk turning | Curls and turns your trunk |
| Your spine | Turns while you sit leaned back | Stays still | Bends and turns, back on the floor |
| Load | Any weight you can hold | Any pin on a cable stack | Bodyweight only |
The Russian twist, if you want to load rotation and add weight over time. The Pallof press if twisting bothers your back, since your spine stays still. The bicycle crunch when you have no equipment. No study has compared the three for oblique growth.
Sets, reps and progression
Do Russian twists at the end of a session, 2 to 3 times a week. Stop each set 1 to 2 reps short of failure, or as soon as you start to swing or slump. Muscle grows across a wide range of reps (Schoenfeld 2021), so pick a range you can keep strict.
Progress in this order: lean further back, then hold the weight further from your chest, then add 5 lb (2.5 kg). When every set reaches 15 per side with a pause at each end, move up and drop back to 10.
Common mistakes
-
Tapping with your armsYour chest stays still and only the weight moves. Keep your arms in front of your chest and turn your ribs and shoulders.
-
Slumping your lower backYour lower back turns while it is rounded, the pattern behind the disc warnings. Sit tall with your chest up, and lean less if you cannot.
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Bouncing at the endsThe end of the turn is where the load peaks. Pause there for a second instead of rebounding.
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Knees swaying side to sideYour hips turn instead of your trunk. Keep your knees pointing forward, heels down if you need to.
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Rushing the repsMomentum carries the weight through the middle. Take 1 to 2 seconds per side.
-
Going too heavyYou start to swing and slump. Drop the weight and lean further back instead.
Russian twist variations and alternatives
Questions people ask
Are Russian twists bad for your back?
Not for most people, done slowly with your chest up. The warning comes from pig spine segments bent thousands of times under load with a twist added (Drake 2005). Your lower back turns little in a twist, 1.2 to 1.7 degrees per joint (Fujii 2007). If twisting or bending already hurts, use the Pallof press.
Do Russian twists work obliques?
Yes, they are the main movers. Turning right uses the left external oblique and the right internal oblique, and oblique activity rose clearly once the twist passed 30 degrees (Swie 2004). The weight only loads them if you lean back.
Should my feet be up or down on Russian twists?
Start with your heels down. Lifting your feet does not add twisting load unless it makes you lean further back. It mostly adds balance and hip flexor work. To make the twist harder, lean further back or hold the weight further from your chest.
Do Russian twists make your waist wider?
No study shows that. Waist size is mostly fat, and six weeks of ab training changed neither waist size nor belly fat (Vispute 2011).
How many Russian twists should I do?
3 sets of 10 to 15 per side, 2 to 3 times a week, stopping 1 to 2 reps short of failure. On Gravitus, as of September 2026, the most common set logged is 20 reps. Logs do not say whether one rep means one side or both.
How much weight should I use for Russian twists?
For 10 reps, the median on Gravitus is 25 lb (11 kg) for men and 22.5 lb (10 kg) for women. The strongest quarter lifts 35 lb (16 kg) and 25 lb (11 kg) or more.
Log every set and see your percentile on every lift, Russian twist included.
Get GravitusRelated exercises
- Drake et al. 2005. Clin Biomech 20(10):1038-1045.
- Marshall and McGill 2010. Clin Biomech 25(1):6-9.
- Fujii et al. 2007. Eur Spine J 16(11):1867-1874.
- Fujimori et al. 2012. Spine 37(21):E1318-E1328.
- Saraceni et al. 2020. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 50(3):121-130.
- McGill 1991. J Orthop Res 9(1):91-103.
- Swie and Sakamoto 2004. Electromyogr Clin Neurophysiol 44(2):111-126.
- Vispute et al. 2011. J Strength Cond Res 25(9):2559-2564.
- Schoenfeld et al. 2021. Sports 9(2):32.